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Hi all, here’s a dumb question on a lighter topic. Has anyone here ever been shook up to the point of crisis/anger by realignment of wards and stakes? I’m not asking because I think it will happen to me – it would probably be a good thing to end up somewhere new in my family’s case. A shakeup is apparently coming the first Sunday in May, though. One of the Twelve will be at our stake conference, and other GAs (not sure who) will apparently be in neighboring stakes. Very momentous for something outside of Zion (all near Fort Worth, TX).
We weren’t part of it, but our ward in the Boston area when I was in college was created from parts of three different wards. There were multiple ward-level leaders with the same previous callings in the new ward, as well as two current Bishops. The ward drew from a poor area, a middle-class area and a very rich area – as well as a working-class, relatively uneducated population and a highly educated, consciously intellectual area. The first couple of years were rough. The man who was called to be the Bishop after the first couple of years was one of the most humble, loving, gentle men I have ever known. By the time we left that ward, after six years, it was a very united, loving ward. It became an example of what the Church can be at the local level, despite tremendous odds.
In my teenage years, back before I joined the church, the reorganized the stakes in my area. Essentially, the split a stake and created 2 out of one. The problem was that it involved my small LDS town and another rival LDS town. Everyone thought that the 2 new stakes would be Town X stake and Town X east stake. What they did was make town X stake and town Y stake, with 2 wards from town X in the town Y stake. One of the Q12 was there to make the announcement and apparently the murmuring in the stake center was extremely loud and and he had to quiet the crowd. What I heard around town in the following months was that a large number of people temporarily stopped attending church all due to the new stake.
What makes this even more crazy is that the 2 towns are so intermarried everyone was related to everyone else.
I was in three different wards in 5 years, all while having the same home address. It is amazing what the economy can do. The last boundary change was the real one for sure this time.
When I was very young, they formed a new branch that was about a 15 mins drive for the branch members vs 45 mins to the ward building we split from. My dad was the BP, and we met at the Oddfellows hall for several months. Then the stake decided to dissolve us and put us back in the ward from before because they didn’t have enough leaders, or so they said. Nearly 40 years later my folks are still grousing about it. They haven’t lived there for over 20 years, and that ward was just made a stake. About a year ago we began attending another ward that better suited our needs. We were asked to meet with our bishop (of our true ward) and he expressed concerns. In the end he said that he would seek further clarification from the SP and to not make any changes until then. We didn’t hear back from him and then we found a residence within the boundaries of our intended ward. It was an interesting case scenario of the LDS ward boundry pros and cons. http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2976&hilit=zoned Thanks for the replies, all, especially the one about attending a different ward by choice. I think a lot of that depends on the bishop (unless trumped by stake leaders with strong feelings). Some are strict about it, and some aren’t – whether in or out of Zion. That’s been the case where I’ve lived before, anyway, though I get the feeling my current stake is on the strict side. 5 years ago, all the wards in our stake were realigned, One of the criteria per church rules is that there be at least 18 full-tithe-paying families in a new ward (presumably because they form the core who are almost guaranteed to accept leadership positions), and the stake presidency said there were exactly 18 in each. The boundaries of my ward were a little strange – they deviated off a fairly large side street through our neighborhood (which is only accessible via that side street) between us and the two inactive families in it. Probably because we are full tithe payers. But beyond that, they didn’t exactly get the participation they were looking for from us.
I’m betting we end up somewhere new. A couple of Sundays ago when the bishop spoke to the ward, he said the visiting member of the Twelve might ask us to do some difficult things. Is that a code phrase? Besides which, if they’re tweaking wards very much, someone who looks at that strange boundary will probably say “That was dumb”. And depending on the building we would attend, it might put some distance between me and a couple of shouting-match opponents. (See other threads for more info, if you care to.)
I like the concept of establishing geographic boundaries for congregations – a lot, but I also believe nobody can make someone attend an assigned ward. You might not be able to hold a calling if you attend a different ward, but it’s a choice you can make, nonetheless. I know this thread has been about reorganization but I don’t think the OP said a reorganization was for sure, just that a GAs were going to be attending multiple units on the same day in the same area. This isn’t all that uncommon. We had the same thing happen within the last year. I thing they all came with the same message. Almost like an area conference but scaled down. Old-Timer wrote:I like the concept of establishing geographic boundaries for congregations – a lot, but I also believe nobody can make someone attend an assigned ward. You might not be able to hold a calling if you attend a different ward, but it’s a choice you can make, nonetheless.
For what it is worth our Bishop shared with us that the SP had said that as a rule everyone must attend their assigned ward, but that it was ok to make exceptions where enforcing the rule might do more harm than good.
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